I arrived at the temple, the young monk no older than 13 looked up from his sweeping briefly to acknowledge me before continuing his chores. The monk welcomed me in and I walked on.
Inside the temple, the local Lao women smiled at me and I returned the kindness. We both agreed that the peace of this place should be preserved and I walked on. Outside the temple, the old dog barely awoke from his sleep as I passed. I agreed to avoid disturbing him and I walked on. I am glad the empires fell before I was born. This is not because of any greater moral reason, but I know me well and I know I would sign up to serve the empire in a place like Luang Prabang, Laos and I 100% know I would end up going 100% Kurtz from Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now (take your choice) or 100% Albert Camus. Laos is an amazingly relaxed country, everyone on my flight (that was basically 100% foreigners) was admitted after giving the nice man from the government 30-40USD. Now I know you may think this is a bribe, but this is the actual legal procedure for entering Laos. You basically have to treat Luang Prabang like an ultra-spiritual beach vacation. No one is in any hurry to do anything so just sit back and nip at your Beer Lao. I basically spend the day walking around the city. I saw two wats, both of which don’t know the name of. The first one was, like most of the Buddhist monks, offensively serine. The only people in this relatively large complex were one novice monk, a local couple, and myself. It was lovely and I started philosophizing about life, not a good thing to do at three in the afternoon. The second wat was too touristy to properly philosophize in in alien environment. While some of the tourists seemed to want to at least pretend to be Buddhists, many of the tourists were actually very disrespectful to the actual Lao worshippers who still used this wat as a functional religious site. I think I may have accidentally promoted myself to comrade and ally of the proletariat (since Laos is one of four remaining Communist states) thanks to my new hat. Today alone three people shouted “Vietnam!” at me in a positive way and I talked a bit to the hotel staff about how I acquired what looks like a Vietnamese military hat. After all the hat business was kind of put behind me, I watched the sunset, chatted with some Lao kids trying to practice English, and ate a fish while drinking a Beer Lao on the Mekong River. A traveling-as-a-lifestyle couple played a bit of music for the dock pretending to be a sit down restaurant. I gave the 5,000 Lao kip (about 0.50USD) which can actually get you kind of far in this country. If at the end of this trip, I write a book, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.
7 Comments
Dad
12/24/2016 12:58:34 am
Regardless of how serene the setting, you always seem to have a beer on your plate. How is that Lao beer anyway?
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sharon
12/24/2016 01:27:49 am
that bowl of white stuff looks nasty
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Jared Paul Miller
12/24/2016 02:45:25 pm
It looks bad but tastes alright with some lime, chilly paste, and soy sauce.
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Sharon
12/24/2016 10:45:33 am
double dog dare u to walk the bamboo bridge!
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Jared Paul Miller
12/24/2016 02:45:48 pm
That is part of today's plan.
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Patty
12/24/2016 07:48:44 pm
Laos looks beautiful!
Reply
Jared Paul Miller
12/26/2016 09:31:57 am
It is a super pretty country. It feels almost out of time though.
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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